Are you interested in the LEP for its generous remuneration (5% net) and its ease of use? Your income, unfortunately, is too high to qualify for it? Be careful, a change that occurred at the beginning of the year may have changed the situation!
The popular savings account has many qualities (notably its excellent rate of 5% and a ceiling recently raised to 10,000 euros), but also a flaw: not everyone has the right. To open one, there is an essential criterion: be little or not taxed.
To sort between eligible taxpayers and others, the banks which distribute the product use a reference: the reference tax income (RFR). This amount changes depending on your income. Each year, you know your new RFR, the one corresponding to the income of the previous year, when you file your declaration in the spring.
The RFR threshold not to be exceeded to open a LEP is also evolving. But not in the same timing: it is updated at the start of the calendar year. At the beginning of January, it went from 21,393 to 22,419 euros for a single person.
LEP: the new conditions to be met to open a popular savings account in 2024
Check your 2023 tax notice!
This temporary delay has a consequence: certain taxpayers could be excluded from the LEP in 2023 and have become eligible since the start of the year. Want to know if this is the case? Nothing could be simpler: take out your 2023 tax notice, the one received last summer, and see if your RFR, which appears on the first page, is now not lower than the figures indicated in the following table.
| Reference tax income ceiling for holding a LEP in 2024 | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Family quotient shares | Metropolitan France | Martinique, Guadeloupe, La Runion | Guyana | Mayotte |
| First part | 22419 | 26531 | 27737 | 41570 |
| Increase for the first additional half-share | +5987 | +6336 | +7634 | +11438 |
| Increase for subsequent additional half-shares | +5987 | +5987 | +6129 | |
| Or for 2 tax shares (husband or civil partnership, single person with one child, single person with 2 children) | 34393 | 38854 | 41358 | 59137 |
If this is the case, and you wish to invest up to 10,000 euros at the net rate of 5%, simply go to your bank branch to open a LEP. The game is worth the effort: despite a small rate drop (from 6 to 5% this February 1), it remains the best investment at the moment for your precautionary savings, the only one that will protect your money from inflation.
LEP: why this savings account will remain the unbeatable investment of 2024
Better: even if your income has increased in 2023 and you go back above the RFR threshold on the occasion of the future declaration, you will not have no obligation to close your LEP immediately. You can still enjoy it for a while. At the start of 2025, your bank will check your RFR again, this time corresponding to your 2023 income. If it exceeds the threshold, your account will not be closed. It is only at the beginning of 2026, no later than April 30, that your bank will do this, if your RFR remains too high for the 2nd consecutive year.